- Ed Zschau
Edwin Van Wyck Zschau (pron-en|'ɛdwɪn væn wɪk ʃaʊ; born
January 6 ,1940 ) representedCalifornia 's 12th District in theUnited States House of Representatives from1983 -1987 . In1986 he ran as the Republican candidate for a seat in theUnited States Senate . He defeatedconservative Bruce Herschensohn in the primary but then lost toincumbent DemocratAlan Cranston by 104,000 votes. It was by far the closest challenge Cranston had in his 4 Senate elections.Zschau briefly re-entered the political arena as the vice presidential running mate to former Colorado Governor
Dick Lamm , a Democrat, who waged a quixotic challenge toRoss Perot for the Reform Party presidential nomination in 1996.Biography
Zschau was born in Omaha,
Nebraska . Zschau is currently a Visiting Lecturer with rank of Professor atPrinceton University in the Departments of Electrical Engineering, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, and in the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. Prior to his current post at Princeton, from 1997-2000, he was Professor of Management at theHarvard Business School and a Visiting Professor atPrinceton University . Zschau's business experience is extensive. He founded and served from1968 -1981 as CEO of System Industries, a computer products company.In 1987, after his narrow defeat for California's United States Senate seat, Zschau became a general partner of Brentwood Associates, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, and in 1988, he was elected Chairman and CEO of Censtor Corp., a company which had been founded by Brentwood to develop advanced magnetic recording components for disk drives. He was recruited from Censtor in April 1993 by
Lou Gerstner to serve as General Manager of theIBM Storage Systems Division until July 1995.During the
1960's , Zachau was for five years an Assistant Professor at theStanford Graduate School of Business , teaching courses in computer systems, management science, and business policy. In 1967-68 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at theHarvard Business School where he taught the required first year MBA course in managerial economics. He has an A.B. degree (cum laude) in philosophy from Princeton University and M.B.A., M.S. (statistics), and Ph.D. degrees fromStanford University .Ed is also the Founding Chairman, Emeritus, and a member of the National Advisory Board of
The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, is on the Board of Scholars of the ACCF Center for Policy Research inWashington, D.C. , and is a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. He serves as Chairman of the Board of NanoOpto Corporation, Princeton Power Systems, andStarTek, Inc. (NYSE), President of Polyera Corporation, as a director ofThe Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (NYSE), and Washington Live, Inc. Ed is also an investor and advisor for several other privately held technology companies.Ed and his wife, Jo, currently reside in
Nantucket, Massachusetts , andLos Altos, California . They have one son, two daughters, and eight grandchildren.
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